11/06/2026
⭐️ Andy Metherell ⭐️
At the weekend I raced in the National Road Bike Time trial Championships, its a relatively new event for road bikes, however one year George Fox won it on a TT bike with dropped handle bars which caused a lot of converse and sine then the course has been on hilly or rolling terrain more suited to road bikes. I first entered this event in 2023 when it was on our local course near Marshfield, on that occasion I got stuck behind a tractor and was a bit disappointed with my time. The following year it was on a pan flat course near Cambridge and the it absolutely poured with rain I was soaked freezing cold and but glad I made the effort to enter. Then in 2025 they announced the course was in the Yorkshire dales on the circuit of Ingleborough. I was super excited, on the day I didn’t pace it at all well due to all the climbing and steep gradients in the first half and ran out of gas in the final km’s. This year when I saw the course was in Scotland I thought that I must go and have another attempt.
Its called the Tour of the Meldons which is a 22 mile circular course with 3 climbs with a mixture of quite B roads, single track lanes and has an up hill finish into the grounds of a hotel. I travel up on Friday night so that I could ride the course before race day and this time planned my pacing strategy meticulously which was to go full gas on the down hill / rolling middle section that had a massive head wind thinking that the second climb would feel OK due to the huge tail wind. That just left quite a technical decent which I had ride twice before and a short up hill finish.
On the day it all went perfectly to plan and found my self going full gas up the final climb into the ground of the hotel .My time was 56:03 which was over 2 min faster that the predicted Spindata time, when I returned to the HQ I discovered that I had won my Vet age group 55 to 59! And then I was presented with a medal!
I’m super happy with the result and that I made the effort to travel all that way to take part in this event!!
